The Shoe Story

As a little girl not owning any shoes seemed quite normal to me as I saw other kids of my age running all around the village without shoes. To be honest with you at that age I didn't want anything else but shoes, I dreamed about shoes, when I saw movies I ogled at shoes and I did masters just to earn money so that I could buy loads of shoes ;-)

I can't really say that my parents didn't have the money to buy shoes for me because they bought hundreds of books, a lot of art supplies, puzzles, board games, notebooks, nice pens, showed me innumerable movies, sent me to music lessons and took me to see more than half of India with them.

In case you are wondering then they did buy shoes for me every year after my 8th grade or so when we moved to a big city (I am not talking about school uniform shoes).

Today I have a closet full of shoes but not a single one of them gives me as much happiness and tranquil as reading, writing, painting, dancing, traveling, nature, music and sewing does (it doesn't matter even if I suck at it).

If I had to give one advice to parents then it would be to give your child exposure to as many things as you can because hobbies (and not Jimmy Choos) make life worth living for.

P.S. Have you seen the movie Children of Heaven yet?

Physics of the impossible

Adjoining is a picture taken by Hubble  telescope. It shows thousands of galaxies that surround us. Each one having thousands of stars and planets. There is a high probability that there is life somewhere in those 100+ billion galaxies. Since Earth is a newborn compared to other galaxies it is possible that the life existing there is much more advanced. Would it ever be possible to contact them?

Ever wonder what will happen when our Sun dies killing everything surrounding it and leaving the beautiful intelligent life that resides in this galaxy go extinct? Unless of course we kill each other before the Sun does in a dispute over the name of 'The Creator', in that case we can't blame it on the Sun.

There were so many things tagged as impossible a century ago, such as man on moon. There are many we still tag as impossible such as invisibility, space travel, teletransportation. Ironically the word impossible itself says i am possible ;-).

The famous theoretical  physicist Michio Kaku talks about these impossible things in his book 'Physics of the impossible' and how far scientists are in cracking the code.

Do you think a billion years from now humans will be hopping from planet to planet, populating (and polluting) everywhere around? One can only wonder or then read what these brilliant minds have to say!

I liked the book and am planning to read all books by Kaku. Will keep you posted ;-)

Court

India's entry for Oscars this year is a Marathi film 'Court'.

In the last scene of the movie a small kid tries to wake up a court judge who is sleeping in a park. The judge wakes up slaps the kid and goes back to sleep. It indicates the current status of judiciary system in India. It is sleeping and whoever tries to wake it up will get slapped in the face even if they are naive and innocent.

This film is an intelligent work of art; subtle, slow, marvelous and yet shocking! It is a movie that you need to experience. The movie says a lot without really saying anything, the harsh reality of castes, classes, justice system, superstitions, repression of artists and much more.

In one of the scenes after a day of court hearings everyone leaves the room, the court clerk switches off lights, the camera stays there in the dark, indicating another day of injustice at the court.

One of the lawyers is a smart woman who objects, talks, takes a stand against men in an aggressive manner in the courtroom. On her way home picks up kids, reaches home and cooks, attends phone calls while cooking, after dinner studies for her case. She does all of this effortlessly while her husband is relaxing on the sofa watching TV. She doesn't rebel, object against this or rather she doesn't even realize that there is any injustice.

This film just peels one layer at a time of the real Indian society.

'Court' is really a fine film, if this doesn't win an Oscar what will!